“For these candidates, Comrade Colonel?” I let the irony ring in my voice. All across the eleven time zones of the Soviet Union on this long Sunday, military officers and employees of institutes and factories under tight Communist control were undoubtedly also being pressured to vote for the candidates approved by the Party. This was the bosses’ version of democracy.
“The vote is secret, Captain Zuyev,” Golubchikov said, his voice neutral. But his meaning was clear; once I registered, his responsibility ended.
The colonel handed me my registry card and a blank ballot. For a moment I felt like ripping it up. But this hardworking doctor was not my enemy. I took the papers and came to attention. “I serve the Soviet Union.”
In the Lenin Room a young captain sat warily at the registration desk, obviously concerned that my minor rebellion might land him in the middle of something unpleasant. He was clearly relieved when I approached the desk, then bent to sign in the one remaining empty space on the page. I was, indeed, the last officer to vote.
I took the ballot into the booth, slid shut the blue curtain, then dropped the ballot, unmarked, into the slot of the varnished box. Now I whispered the ritual phrase of military obedience: “I serve the Soviet Union.”
Two days later I saw Colonel Golubchikov on the third-floor corridor. He looked like a boxer who had just lost a fight. That morning Pravda had announced the election results. Communist candidates had been defeated in every important district. No important Party man had been elected in Moscow, Leningrad, or Kiev. The Party bosses in the Baltic Republics had been defeated, as had the general commanding the KGB in Estonia and the four-star general commanding all Soviet forces in Germany. Boris Yeltsin had been elected to the Congress of People’s Deputies by a massive majority, defeating the Party hack whom the Air Force had found so “acceptable.”
“Good morning, Comrade Colonel,” I said pleasantly as we passed. “It’s a great day for our nation.”
Golubchikov stopped, his hands thrust deeply into the side pockets of his starched white medical coat. He seemed about to speak, but then scowled silently and turned on his heel.
For the next eight days I had my final round of X rays, blood tests, and orthopedic examinations. This was an official review of my physical condition required as part of my formal permanent removal from flight status. In principle, I could have petitioned to remain on limited flying duty in low-performance aircraft, as had my friend “Karpich” Karpov, who had suffered the spine injury when his stupid zampolit shot him down with an R-23 missile. Karpich hoped to end his military career flying an old An-2 Anushka biplane, dropping scared cadets at Armavir in parachute training. He could not imagine a life outside the protective blanket of the military. To me that blanket had become a suffocating shroud. I declined my right to appeal.
During those days, shuttling among the laboratories and radiological service, I learned from friendly nurses about a medical scandal of explosive proportions. The previous autumn, there had been five officers from the Republic of the Congo at the hospital undergoing complete physical examinations as part of their jet fighter pilot training in the Soviet Union. At that time, I had also been in the hospital briefly for a physical exam. The African pilots had stayed in a small ward of their own, just beside my six-bed ward. Their Russian was poor, but they seemed friendly enough fellows, and I always made a point of exchanging small talk about the cold Moscow weather and soccer matches with them. The Defense Ministry placed great stock in such “golden friends.” Selling both military equipment and training to third world countries was a major source of hard currency for the government.
And these handsome, ambling black fellows certainly had plenty of hard currency. Like many Middle Eastern or African pilots, their selection had more to do with tribal or family connections than natural aptitude. Their main interest in Moscow seemed to be buying luxury goods at a special Voyentorg that accepted only hard currency. After a week, their ward was piled high with cartons of stereo equipment and television sets.
Their other main interest was Russian girls. Although it was strictly against hospital regulations, the five of them dressed in well-tailored civilian suits each night and marched out of the ward, bound for the city center. When they returned late each night, they had obviously been drinking. A Soviet pilot who spoke some French learned that the fellows from the Congo thought highly of Russian girls, but found them “tres cher” very expensive.
Then one morning I saw a whole covey of senior doctors in their flapping white medical coats, led by Golubchikov, rushing toward the office of Colonel Ivanov. I had not thought too much about the incident then. But when I returned to the hospital in March, Natasha, a pleasant Urkainian nurse, had told me that three of the Congolese pilots had tested positive for HIV, the virus that caused “SPID,” AIDS.
The ominous news had flashed around the hospital within an hour, she said. Not only had those fellows slept with Russian girls, the hospital had used the same hypodermic syringes to draw blood from the Congolese and other patients, including me. Although the Central Aviation Hospital had a West German CAT scan, computerized Japanese laboratory equipment, and the latest imported surgical devices, the Ministry of Defense was unable to obtain disposable syringes. And the nurses told me that lazy and incompetent medical orderlies rarely sterilized the reusable syringes correctly. And, six months earlier, I had sat in the laboratory with these African fellows while blood samples were taken from all of us.
After a sleepless night, I went to see Olga, the friendly technician in charge of the blood chemistry section of the medical laboratory.
“You’re not the only one who’s scared, Sasha,” she told me. Olga had a tiny supply of German plastic disposable syringes. She used one to draw my blood for an unauthorized test for HIV. I paced the corridors for three hours until she brought me the results. From her smile, I knew immediately I was negative. But over a glass of tea in the officers’ cafeteria, Olga told me the scandal had caused an uproar in the hospital. The five Congolese pilots had already been sent back to Brazzaville. The hospital staff had been sworn to secrecy.
“By regulation, they should have been tested for SPID the first day they were here,” she whispered. “The Congo is right next to Zaire. All those countries are rife with the virus. And they should have been quarantined until they were tested.”
“Aren’t they trying to trace the women those pilots were with?” I realized the question was absurd; the hospital obviously did not intend to even have Soviet military patients at the hospital tested for possible infection from contaminated hypodermic syringes. It was only my friendship with Olga that gave me the opportunity to put my mind at ease.
Olga shook her head, again whispering. “No. There was no investigation. Senior officers want to pretend the incident never happened.”
That night I again had trouble sleeping. But my insomnia was not caused by the sour dread of possible AIDS infection. I sat up in bed. Outside the ward, the dull orange glow of the fire alarm lamp lit the silent corridor. Sleet clicked unpleasantly on the windows. I realized the whole sordid business offered me a last, desperate chance to win my medical discharge through blackmail.
Apparently the hospital was trying to suppress a scandal of major proportions. Some of the patients who could have been infected from those needles included senior pilots. But the hospital probably felt they had too much to lose to ever allow the story to surface. I now had other plans.
April 6 was a drizzly spring day with the birch and maple trees in the park coming into their first full bud. I went to Lieutenant Colonel Merkulov’s office and asked for an immediate meeting with Colonel Ivanov. Something in my manner must have jarred Merkulov because he didn’t protest this unusual request.